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Monday, August 3, 2015

Bobby: 2 Weeks Old

Today Bobby is two weeks old. At his 10 day appointment, he weighed 9 lbs 7 oz. At his two week appointment he weighed 10 lbs 7 oz, so he just made it one ounce past his birth weight. Although he initially had no problems with latching and nursing, once my milk came in on day 4 he developed some problems with latching. He would scream and scream when I tried to get him to nurse and then suddenly he would just latch on. So I was still getting him to nurse every time, but it would take a while. "A while" turned into sometimes as much as two hours after a few days of this. At first it was only happening in the evening, but it turned into an every time we had to nurse thing. I was starting to get worn down, but after talking to a couple friends of mine we decided that he might have a mild tongue tie that was causing this and the doctor confirmed that his frenulum is shorter than usual, but it isn't enough to warrant clipping. So I tried many different things until we figured out what worked best for him. I nursed him sleepy, swaddled, and pumped some milk first. I had to drip milk in his mouth before he would latch on. This was a pain, but it was more than worth it to stop the screaming and struggling to latch every time. After a week of that, he is finally able to just latch normally with minimal to no struggle.

Bobby will go days without spitting up and then he will spit up what seems like his whole meal. Genna did that when she was a baby, but much less often once I reduced to nursing on just one side. That was one thing we did when he was struggling to nurse was reduce to just nursing on one side, so I am not sure what is causing the huge spit ups yet. He is pooping and peeing like crazy, so I don't think it is hindering his overall milk intake.

Bobby is doing good at night. Most nights he goes one 6 hour and one 4 hour time between nursings. After a couple nights of that he goes to 3-4 hours all night. He's still impossible to keep awake during nursing which is what I need to be able to get him on a "schedule." I use that term loosely because all I really mean by it is that he is sleeping, waking and nursing, and then starting the cycle over again during the daytime. I feel like a schedule naturally follows once I can establish that routine.

The siblings are constantly asking to hold him. He gets very overly stimulated so I am having to limit their holding time so he doesn't get so worked up and awake that he can't fall asleep for a couple hours. They are not happy about this, but I promised them in a couple of weeks things will most likely be different and he'll be able to handle more holding.

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Where did "A Pew All Our Own" come from?

My husband and I were sitting in church before Mass shortly after we were confirmed into the Catholic Church. Both of our gazes drifted to a pew close by where a family filled up the whole pew. Granted it was one of the shorter pews, not a full length one. I can't remember who said it to whom, but one of us said, "I hope we fill up a pew with our family one day." We agreed it would be wonderful. And so that is what we're hoping for...a pew all our own.

Living the Good Life

At a Castle in Nurnberg, Germany

Love of my life

People think they have to find their soulmate to have a good marriage. You get married, and after 20 years of loving, bearing and raising children, meeting challenges- then you'll have "created" your soulmate. -Diane Sollee